the eclipse

nearly every morning, Brady walks into my bedroom and asks for a treat.  this morning he walked in and said "the clips are today!!!"  he's been counting down the days.

I scheduled last week to have stacey meet us at the library for Elizabeth's therapy so we could be there for the library party.  turned out not to be much of a party (so strange because most of the library party are over the top well done) but I'm still so glad we went.  it turned out to be a really fun morning.

I had to get us all ready early so we could go straight from dropping Abigail off at school.

my kids just really love to be photographed.  Brady asked if I could take a picture of him so I told him to stand against this wall and then Elizabeth had to stand next to him and wouldn't leave because she wanted to be in all the pictures, not just one.

trying to ever so gently nudge her out of the picture.

seriously?!  i can't get over this kid.

especially the hand in the pocket.

the library was a MADHOUSE.  parking all down mainstreet was nuts and they had the empty dirt lot across the street roped for cars to park there.  and police were directing traffic and standing out to keep the peace.  why?  oh, because the library offered eclipse glasses to be handed out at 10am.  I knew there would only be 200 pairs (because I called last Monday) so I picked some up from grease monkey instead.  good thing because there were well over 200 people (one library inside estimated around 1000) and they'd been out there for hours standing or sitting in camp chairs.  craziness.

also, thankful again to have Brady be my helper.  he's so great.

stacey brought her son since he didn't have preschool and I was soooo excited for Brady to meet him. their birthdays are only five days apart and the boys hit it off instantly.  stacey told me she signed Zack up for a 4 week thing of soccer so I signed Brady up for it too.  hoping to nurture that little friendship and I think Brady will love it.  stacey and Elizabeth worked on colors with paw patrol.

they also did nursery rhymes in this Elmo board book that we ended up checking out and bringing home with us.

I can't even handle it.  it really is amazing how well they hit it off.

ha.

we started watching the eclipse around 11:15 and had such a good view from our spot in the library that we stayed in the kid section and just came over to check on it whenever we wanted.

most of the reason I wanted to come to the library for it was (obviously not for the glasses because we brought our own) because stuff like this is just more fun to experience with other people than it is to experience alone.  we had a little group of us (including my favorite librarian, Andrea) that were gathered together watching it.  Andrea also kept playing a total eclipse of the heart on her phone so we had some mood music.

I packed sandwiches and apples for the kids and it came in handy.

didn't stop Elizabeth from scrounging for more food in my purse though.  it was great being with the librarians because they opened the emergency exit door and we all could go as we pleased outside and inside through that little side door.

we got home around 12:45, just as our trash was being picked up.  I lent our glasses to each of the trash men for a few seconds so they could have a look.  they didn't speak any English (except one of them managed to say something about apple and iPhone because of the way the sun looked like it had a bite taken out of it) but I think they thought it was pretty cool.  I watched it in its final minutes and it was gone at 1:14.  crazy how much hype that brought for how brief it was.  cool to witness though. what amazed me most was, during the height of the eclipse, how the sky was barely dimmed even though we were only getting 7% of the sun's rays when we were used to 100%.  it's just that powerful.  also, I kept thinking of so many spiritual analogies from it which was cool.

also, in case we're still wondering, still going back and forth with this lady about paint colors for my home.

at 2:30, I dropped by three kids off at Sarah's house and went to the school to observe the afternoon A preschool class.  short story: it looked like a much better fit for Brady.  I called to see about switching him to that class.

walked in on this... Abigail was setting up an epic "eeny meeny miney mo" with her chapter books.  I say epic because she only does the "you are NOT it" version so each book has to be individually eliminated.

Andrew was just loving checking the mail with honey.

I filled this out for Brady.  I swear I explained the eclipse to him SEVERAL times and had him watch multiple you tube videos about it and even made up our own little model using a crumpled ball of paper as the sun and Andrew's nose syringe as the moon but he somehow still thought there would be a million hair clips floating across the sky.  so... he was a little disappointed.

and lastly... I laughed out loud when I was cleaning up and saw this.  "my goal is to improve my habit of reading books in the morning by not reading."  ...written right next to her homework assignment of "read 15 minutes."  I'm not sure how much she explained to her teacher so her teacher probably thinks we're all weird.  just to fill you in... Abigail LOVES reading fairy books and will read one or two when she wakes up (they each take her about 45 minutes) but I've told her that she can't do that on school mornings because she needs to just come downstairs to shower right when she wakes up.  now my kid is the one who is writing goals about trying to stop reading because it's forbidden by her mother.